California has a massive precarious employment problem, and it's trying to do something about it.

LOS ANGELES—The factory my dad was working at the day I was born sits on the edge of Compton, an industrial district where rail lines and snaking smokestacks border square, tidy homes. If you drive along S. Wilmington Ave., the road swells upward, and from its crest you can see downtown Los Angeles shimmering in the distance.

Dad worked as a plant foreman in the shadow of the City of Angels for eight years before our family packed up in search of better things in Canada. He remembers working such long hours at the plastics factory that he sometimes slept overnight on the shop floor. My mum, who did the books at the same place, recalls undocumented workers — mostly migrants from Mexico — being paid $3 an hour.

The hard, sprawling city my parents left behind is in fact America’s wage theft capital. An estimated $26.2 million (U.S.) in wages are stolen from ordinary Angelenos every week. One in three Californian workers is low-wage — about 4.8 million people. In short, it’s an unlikely source of inspiration for Ontarians who want better workplace protection.

<snip>

“I think what’s interesting about California is there’s a range of things happening,” says Deena Ladd, of the Toronto-based Workers Action Centre. “They’re not just raising the minimum wage. They’re taking on wage theft, they’re taking on issues of enforcement, they’re taking on fair scheduling. And that’s basically our same message to the (Ontario) government. We need a systemic approach to deal with the deterioration of working conditions.”

As Ontario’s Ministry of Labour prepares to release its interim report reviewing its employment and labour laws, California has spent the past two years forging ahead. Things are not perfect. But there is momentum.